Ricoh's approach to product life cycle management and technology development

Abstract

Ricoh aims sustainable environmental management that simultaneously realizes environmental impact reduction and profit creation. Toward such realization, we grasp impact quantity in each production process and establish development tasks by assessment of eco-balance and integrated environmental impact (IEI) throughout the whole product life cycle. As the target value, we draw a figure where the environmental impact is fitted into the allowable limit of the earth in 2050; and as its milestone, we have decided to have IEI reduced 20% by 2010. Thanks to the technical development, by 2005, we have increased sales revenue while decreasing IEI by 22%.